Marketing Spirituality

So - we're a consumer society. It's true. And as a church we need to be "culturally relevent" - yeah... that's true. I don't really disagree with that. That is part of church success. So effective churches do market themselves and it works. It's true.

But don't you think that sometimes we forget that the Holy Spirit and the Power of God and his word might perhaps (I don't know ... call me crazy to persume this) be more effective than us being cool and making sure the world sees that we're really cool.

And don't you think that since we we're created to be in community with God that our human instinctive longing to get that wholeness back in our lives might also be more powerful than making sure we make the church look cool.

I don't know - I've just been noticing it more in the last few years. We all have cool little logos as a church and all of our events have really post modern catchy names (Fuse, X-stream, Deeper, Flipt etc....)

Church is starting to feel like a Starbucks logo and our program names are starting to look like Starbucks drink choices. (If we name them in Italian - people will feel like their drink is soo much cooler, and lets give them lots of choices to boot)

I'll take the Venti Soy Double Shot Alpha Marraige class for people who like to play frisbee and have divorced parents please. Oh - and make it extra hot with extra foam.

All of our leaders wear really cool clothes, have cool hair cuts, and just basically look hot.

It's like we took all the most popular kids from highschool and then made them leaders of our churches.

And it makes me a little nervous and I'm just crossing my fingers that everyone also has depth and a lot of God in their lives too and not just 160$ distressed jeans and 140$ highlights.

I've actually had little thoughts when I was hired that, that that was one of the reasons I seemed good for the job. Ok - I don't think I'm the shiznit or anything and I'm not making a super cocky comment here. I just am being honest about my thoughts - lets face it - I look 20ish, I keep up with trends to a fault and if you look at my CV I look really cool on paper with all the art and the travelling and crazy expieriences I've had and I look a little ethnic so that might help our church feel like they are multicultural which is a wonderful PC thing to have a multi ethnic chrurch so that everyone realizes that God is for all races.

But I don't want to be a marketing ploy. And I hope I spend more time getting spiritual depth as I take making sure I'm trendy and culturally relevent.

And to be quite honest, when I was hired for this position that's where I felt most lacking - and still do. I'm like - yeah - I can make this program look cool, I can organize events and coordinate things and I'm good with hanging out with kids and talking about things on their level BUT

can I lead them spiritually? Am I a spiritual leader? Am I strong enough to call them on things and confront them on their walk with Christ and challange them to go deeper.

Is my own life an example just by them watching me. Does Jesus seep out of my pores - or is the only thing they can see is how I have a rock star shag, a nose ring, and I layer my shirts and wear low rise jeans.

And this isn't a critique on my church by any means. I fall into this trap - we all do right now. I see myself looking at the kids in my group and wondering which cool kid I need to get into leadership because it will make our group look cooler or how can I get more boys to come to youth group so more girls will want to come for the boys. Or which young adults can I get to help with the youth group so that the kids will think that Jesus is cool.

I just went to a huge youth conference with the kids too and this same marketing of spirituality was all around me. I saw it in the bands and the speakers and the visual effects and the stuff they were selling. It was yelling all around me-

"COME ON KIDS - JESUS IS COOL - REALLY - HE IS!!!!"

Well, I guess the point of this critique is that maybe we should just be aware of this church trend of marketing our spirituality and we need to NOT make it the main thing.

And like Starbucks - if we're going to be based on a lot on marketing to "sell Jesus" we better sure as hell do it up right and make sure our "customers" get un-watered down truth along with the love and care that should be attached to a for real Jesus community.

And as much as it's cool to hate a coorporation presently - I've got to give that to Starbucks. Their coffee is actually good, they treat their employees properly, and they are going completely fair trade in the next few years.

I guess we just need to make sure we don't have WALMART churches - Jesus for cheap, Jesus for our convieniance, and Jesus at the expense of others.